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So we’re getting involved in a church here in Dahlonega named Christ Family Church. It’s quite phenomenal to find a church we can call home after coming back to Georgia. While we attended some nice ones in Lawrenceville, one of them was too focused on tradition and the other was too focused on its members (although it was trying to change that and become more missional). In Dahlonega, CFC is solidly biblical and missional. Just because they’re so concise, here are the vision and distinctions of the church:

Missional

We focus our times together on building up believers and encouraging one another to take the Good News of salvation into the community, region, and world.

Family-Integrated

We place high value on the health of families, and our corporate meetings are multi- generational in that children remain together with families in the meetings to allow and encourage families to function and grow together.

Covenant Membership

Covenant membership involves all members’ commitment to be subject to one another for the sake of the integrity and spiritual growth of the Church. It is both a solemn and joyful matter—a deep agreement between regenerated believers that welcomes discipline for the sake of the greater good of sanctification.

Expositional Preaching

We, in our corporate presentation of Bible texts, will deal exegetically with each passage, taking as our main point for the sermon the main point of the text and attending to each issue presented in that text.

Reformed Southern Baptist

God, with absolute sovereignty, accomplishes the salvation of his people by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and for the glory of God alone. He uses his people as His means of spreading the gospel of eternal salvation; we, therefore, being Southern Baptists, cooperate with other churches in supporting mission efforts worldwide.

Plurality of Elders

Elders are the scripturally mandated positions of leadership in the Church. Biblically qualified leaders are shepherds, guiding the body towards accomplishing congregationally selected goals and adhering to Scriptural values; thus, the church is led by the Holy Spirit and guided by multiple elders.

Gospel-Centered Counseling

We acknowledge the Bible as the chief authority on healthy, fulfilled living. As such, pastoral counseling is first and foremost the application of Biblical truth to guide us through our lives.

Those who know me or have read old posts in this blog know that many of those topics have been addressed in this blog, especially the last one.

A friend of mine named Adam Neal at Journey in Raleigh, NC wrote a great blog post. I’ll repost it here:

Let me set a scene for you: You are sitting at a restaurant with your family enjoying a nice dinner and having a pleasant conversation. Before you can even order your food, the toddler in the booth behind you begins crying because dad took a toy away. You can barely carry a conversation now because the kid is going crazy! What’s even more annoying is when there is a group of adults that act as if they are the only ones in the restaurant. They make so much noise that you can’t help but to be distracted. Unintentional distractions are obnoxious and mostly rude.

In the Old Testament, people would express worship for the Lord with sacrifices, burnt offerings, and bowing. In fact, worship through singing didn’t appear until 2 Chronicles. Singing and playing instruments became a popular way of worshipping the Lord as shown in the Psalms. Worship didn’t change all that much in the New Testament. Worship remained to be an outward expression of love for God. Hebrews 12: 28-29 says, “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our ‘God is a consuming fire.’ ” In John 4:23 Jesus instructs believers to worship in spirit and in truth. Culture obviously makes a huge difference in our style of worship these days compared to worship in bible times. However, congregational worship is to remain reverent and respectful of others. I am not opposed to the full band, “contemporary” style church. I’m a worship leader at a great one! We just can’t forget that there are other people around us that may be turned off to Christianity if it involves screaming and running around. Hyper-emotionalism gets in the way of evangelism, and possibly interrupts someone’s personal walk with God. Letting your emotions take control of your actions is an immature act in any circumstance. In Revelation, John witnessed the most intense worship service in the history of the world and what did he do? Run around the throne room? Scream at the top of his lungs? Dance around naked? No! He got on his face and worshipped. Even the 24 elders and 4 living creatures got down and worshipped. Maybe this means our worship should involve more bowing and less moving.

While the book Wild at Heart by John Eldredge has some helpful points, overall it has some serious flaws. I thought this review by Daryl Wingerd accurately described some of them, so I’m going to repost his review here.

A Critical Review of John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart

Author: Daryl Wingerd

John Eldredge’s book Wild at Heart was recommended to me by several different Christians. To be honest, reading this book was not high on my list of priorities, but the people who recommended it to me are very dear and trusted friends. Partly out of respect for them, and partly out of my pastoral sense of obligation to “Test all things; hold fast what is good,” I made the time to review what Charles R. Swindoll endorsed as, “the best, most insightful book I have read in at least the last five years.”

From the outset, you will undoubtedly notice that my review of Wild at Heart is overwhelmingly unfavorable. There would be no point in tempting you to read this entire essay by leading you to believe otherwise. But still, I want to begin by saying that I do not disagree with everything John Eldredge has to say. I believe, as he does, that men in America have become passive, passionless, and even feminized in some regards. I commend his efforts to convince fathers to steer their boys in a more masculine direction. Read the rest of this entry »

Why should we have self-esteem? There is no Biblical foundation for this. One could argue that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, (Psalm 139:14) but, in context (Psalm 139), is that really talking about self-esteem? Or is it focused more on God’s transcendent power as Creator and Sustainer? I think more fitting would be the verse that states our righteousness is as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). There is nothing in and of ourselves that is worthy of true esteem unless Christ is in us. And even if He is, why would we esteem ourselves? We can instead esteem Him and recognize His value. This could be referred to as “God-esteem.” This seems to be a Biblical response to “man/self-esteem” which is so prevalent in our western culture today.